[emteycz]

Simply look at prices and rewards. You literally can't have any profit without using waste electricity. The price of ordinary industrial electricity anywhere in the world is at least double of what you can mine with the latest Bitcoin mining hardware (which is expensive to begin with).

BTW, what if the demand for Bitcoin mining hardware accelerated our technological or economical development of semiconductors? I think that's good, and the electricity is small price for that.

[imtringued]

In theory Bitcoin has some psychological benefits. It is literally Keynesian gold digging. You are putting people to work (workers employed at power stations and workers at semiconductor companies) and thus stimulate the economy. A lot of the bitcoin money originally came from central banks or at least was pushed to Bitcoin by the central banks. The only problem is that Bitcoin mining is not a domestic industry. Not every country benefits equally.